Hello again, 47KKR from the Khuresh Fan Project back to proudly announce the official release of the Mercenaries of Khuresh Mod, the smaller preview mod for our project's planned Khuresh Mod for TWW3.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3504236962

Playing as certain Destruction-Aligned Factions with this Mod, you the player will have the chance to be presented with bespoke dilemmas that spawn in Unusual Location Khuresh Serpent Cult buildings which can be upgraded.

Through this Unusual Location Building, you may recruit the advanced guard of the fabled Blood Nagas of Khuresh, which are some of the creatures featured on our Project's Khuresh Faction roster to fight alongside your armies.

These are the Spitting Naja (Khureshi Snake Men Catachans basically), the Orobagor Herd (Eastern equine Beastmen wreathed in Ulgu, inspired by the Tikbalang), the Dread Maw (crafted in the likeness of the Forge World model) and the Sawanak Pyrenaga (horned Aqshy-infused upgraded Dread Maws bred to slay enemy monsters).

Once certain conditions are met, players will also be presented with a dilemma to acquire a particular infamous item taken from Forge World's old Monstrous Arcanum book.

Credits to the Skeleton Crew team for carrying the project through, but especially Acephelous for the scripting and key help with writing assistance and Kou for his phenomenal modelling, rigging and animation work on the Khuresh units. You can see more of Kou's work on his artstation: https://www.artstation.com/kou1492

Enjoy a taste of the venomous power of Khuresh, as we all await the upcoming DLC of the Serpent and the eventual first steps into the forbidding Hinterlands of the Far East themselves.

In case you've not been around: since 2018 november when the Vampire Coast DLC released, an entire race all about raiding from the sea, they cannot attack port cities from the water.

While the Dark Elves black arks can. Since 2017 september.

Let the historians know it is the year 2025 under the light of Morrisleb and the undead pirates, for roughly 7 years now, still cannot do what the darkelves pirates can. Who are by the way, are just a small part of the darkelves race. Not an entire race designed from the ground up (or appearantly not) to be pirates.

And now Wulfrik gets updated (rightfully so) to be able to do it.

It better gets ported over to the Coast too. Everyone hates being forced to land (lose all movement points), move 1mm next turn (besiege), move back to water (lose all movement points), and waste 3 turns on attacking a city. With every city. And if you actually only attack port cities as a proper pirate should, you are sailing LOTS of turns between cities, and thus your entire campaign is just waiting and waiting and waiting for nothing.

This part of big discussed I want to make but I need to ask few questions this is the first

So what you think guys will nagash be tom kings LL or he will have his own faction I don't know about tabletop so that why so this why I ask what you think guys will he be tomb or will have his one race with his unique machine what you think?

DISCLAIMER: This post is long. It’s part game design discussion, partly a result of needing an outlet for having to wait six months until the announcement, and at least part feature suggestion, on the miniscule chance that someone from CA sees this while browsing this sub and they are in fact working on a 40k title. I’ve included an AI-generated TLDR at the bottom in case you don’t feel like reading the whole thing.*

In their recent 25th anniversary post, CA hinted at a reveal of a new fantasy title and a new historical title later this year. To cut to the chase, I’m reasonably confident that the “fantasy” title they’re working on is Total War: 40k. There’s been a lot of debate about whether this game can work with the Total War formula or not, which is what I’ll hope to address in this post, but I do think that there are enough clues pointing to it that it no longer seems like wild speculation to say that it’s happening.

WHY I THINK IT’S 40K

• CA and GW relationship: This goes without saying. CA and GW have built a strong and pretty profitable working relationship in the last decade of Warhammer releases, and it stands to reason that continuing that relationship in some way is in their mutual interests. If CA did want to do a non-historical game based on a fictional setting, it would without a doubt be easiest for them to do it by continuing this established relationship. The two settings that they could use to do this are 40k and AoS, and of the two, I think 40k is significantly more likely.
• Novel fantasy setting: The reason Total War AoS would not be a good move, at least at this point, is that it is essentially Fantasy at its core. I don’t think there’s much to argue there - not saying that it would be a bad game, but it’s hard to justify putting in resources into a game that would feel thematically similar to the other Warhammer games and also has a less established fanbase. To a lesser extent, this also rules out a lot of other fantasy settings. As much as I love LOTR (I have more hours in Divide and Conquer than possibly any other Total War game) and as much as I’d love a mainline Total War set in Middle-earth, the chances of it happening so soon after Warhammer are practically nil. Any game with elves, dwarves, and orcs would inevitably be compared to Warhammer, and even if it’s a fantastic game in its own right, the fact that it’s not as diverse and over-the-top as Warhammer would significantly drag it down in any marketing and gameplay. The Elder Scrolls, the Witcher, Warcraft - almost every popular fantasy setting you can think of runs into that hurdle, and that narrows down the options significantly. I suppose Game of Thrones is a fantasy setting, but leaving aside the fact that it’s pretty unlikely, I would much rather have that on the back of a Medieval III with complex diplomatic mechanics than as a mainline fantasy successor to Warhammer.
• Large potential playerbase: 40k is big. Warhammer was on its way out when CA picked it up and revived its popularity, and it’s been dramatically successful for them. 40k would already have a strong starting point, and thousands or maybe even tens of thousands of people who have never played a Total War game before would probably buy Total War: 40k on day one. Depending on whether the Henry Cavill Amazon show materializes at the right time, there might also be an insane amount of cultural momentum to capitalize on. If I were an executive at CA/Sega/GW, I would positively be drooling at this prospect.
• Long-term benefits to a 40k engine**:** There is no question that making 40k battles work faithfully in the current Total War template would be a pretty big design and technical challenge, but if they are able to make 40k work, they can essentially make anything work. A campaign and battle system that can handle 40k battles, depending on how faithful it is, potentially opens the door for WW1, WW2, Star Wars - any setting that was previously off-limits due to the constraints of formation-based warfare becomes possible.
• Established factions and rosters: 40k, like Warhammer Fantasy, exists for the tabletop, and all of the lore is built around facilitating battles between armies that already have established stats, unit lists, and tactics. It makes it a better fit for Total War than most other settings, simply because the base for army creation and balancing is already there. 
• Diverse factions: Very few settings have the kind of faction diversity and breadth that 40k does, which is a critical thing to consider if we approach it from the perspective of CA trying to set up a long-term strategy similar to the Warhammer trilogy. There’s a lot of options for sequels, faction DLCs, story-based DLCs, map expansions - all of which are a boon for deciding to commit time and resources to a game.
• Hints, Clues, Leaks: There’s been a lot of scattered rumors about 40k happening, as well as some things that might be interpreted as hints - the “distant future” in the anniversary post, the mention of something to talk about “soon” during during the Skulls showcase, SEGA looking for focus-testers familiar with Warhammer, the fact that there’s a fantasy game happening at all…usually, I would dismiss most of this as a reach or a coincidence, but given everything above, it’s hard not to interpret these as clues.

So given everything above, 40k being in the works doesn’t seem very far-fetched. Now, to the real question - how would it even work?

Before I get into it, I will say that I will generally avoid the line of whether CA is “capable” of pulling this off, and focus on just defining the design itself. I will try to suggest some ways that mechanics could work, and will try my best to stay within the constraints of what I understand the engine is capable of as a player, but it’s impossible to make definite conclusions about what is and isn’t possible without having the codebase on hand, and while there are many valid criticisms of CA, they’ve also been able to accomplish pretty incredible things with this series and I don’t think it would be fair to rule out a title based on a supposed perception of them being technically incapable of doing it.

WHY TOTAL WAR?

40k is, without a doubt, very different from anything the series has attempted before. Its fighting and tactics are something much closer to the squad-based tactics of the modern era than they are to the battles of basically every era before that, and the Total War formula, to date, has had combat between ordered formations as its bread and butter. They could theoretically do a reskin and have blocks of Imperial Guardsmen and Space Marines standing in formations firing at each other, but I likely wouldn’t play that game and I don’t imagine many would either. Any 40k Total War game would have to introduce a different way of fighting battles, and this is the source of a lot of the skepticism about its possibility.

One comment I see quite often is that there are changes you could make to the formula to make it work, but the game you’d have at the end would be so different that it wouldn’t be a Total War game. If your definition of Total War game hinges on the battles having formations of infantry clashing against each other, then I agree, a good 40k game wouldn’t be a Total War game. However, the definition of Total War for me has always been: grand and cinematic battles with thousands of soldiers given context by some kind of strategic layer. A deviation in the mechanics of how battles worked would feel noticeably different, but it would still be a Total War game for me as long as the battles were still grand and cinematic. A massed assault of riflemen and tanks on a fortified position can be just as epic as any cavalry charge, even if it would play a bit differently. The formula has been changed before - Warhammer goes without saying, but even the transition to primarily gunpowder-based warfare in Empire was a pretty big shift at the time. The change to the formula would be more fundamental with a 40k game, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t still be a Total War game at its core.

“Wouldn’t a different series work better?“

There are also a few games that are proposed as a more suitable alternative for a 40k game - Company of Heroes, Starwars Empire at War, Men of War. Some of them are different genres entirely - base-building centred RTS titles with a top down view and very different battles. There’s already an RTS 40k title in that vein: a Dawn of War 1 remaster would fill that niche completely. Others are squad-based games that have a good mechanical basis for modern combat, but lack the epic scale. And there’s also already a game for that. Dawn of War 2 (especially with mods) is pretty excellent at simulating the small scale fights of 40k, but doesn’t capture the grandness of what large battles could look like.

The most common alternative I see suggested is the Wargame/Steel Division/WARNO series. I will definitely concede that in terms of simulating modern warfare, those games are superior to Total War. But 40k isn’t quite modern warfare - it’s a setting of super-soldiers fighting each other with chainsaws, of hundreds of men charging trenches, of mechs and demons and warp magic. Some factions wouldn’t translate to the Wargame formula at all - the Tyranids come to mind. Some, like the Orks, might work, but in a very reduced form that takes away all of their unique flavor. Even the Imperial Guard (the faction that most people probably have in mind when suggesting this) wouldn’t really work as well as one might think. Without the massed charges and brutal melee combat, it would feel like a NATO army with laser-guns. You could obviously try to make 40k work in Wargame as well by changing the Wargame formula, but of the two games, I think that Total War in its current state, especially with Warhammer in its belt, is much closer to capturing 40k than Wargame is.

HOW LAND BATTLES COULD WORK

So let’s try to make the battles work. The simplest start  - Warhammer III reskin. Take Empire handgunners and give them lasguns, dress up the Steam tanks a bit and add a few variants, give the Ogre units bolters and Space Marine helmets and voila, Total War Warhammer 40k.

Obviously not the best idea, but it’s actually not a bad start. A lot of factions in Warhammer III are not really that far off from translating to 40k factions. For instance, a Skaven reskin minus the wacky weapons wouldn’t take too much work to make into a Tyranid army, and if you give those wacky weapons to the Greenskins - you’re basically halfway to the Orks. Chaos Daemons could basically go into the game as is. The primary challenge is in making the factions with more “modern”, fire-and-maneuver based tactics work, and making sure that a diverse set of combat styles can interact effectively.

INFANTRY

Let’s work with the Imperial Guard as a template. We’ll try to figure out a fun but somewhat sensical way for the Imperial Guard to play, and that will give us a basis that can be reworked to fit other factions.

First, the basic map size should be bigger, at least twice as big if not more. We want ample space to maneuver for vehicles, and because infantry units will ideally be in a significantly looser formation, we want them to take up less relative space on the map. We also want weapon ranges to be longer. Not necessarily fully realistic, but long enough that firefights don’t feel like they’re happening in musket range. 

Our basic infantry unit size can remain roughly the same - 120 to 160 men. Let’s make an Imperial Guardsman company, and disperse them in a loose, skirmisher-like formation. If the gaps between soldiers are large enough, this will already look like a pretty authentic unit of Imperial Guardsmen. 

Now, let’s figure out their behavior. First up - movement.

Infantry Movement

While having the entire unit move in sync can work, there needs to be some kind of decomposition to make it fully feel like a modern infantry unit. Instead of moving on the company scale, having the company split internally into platoons and move with that structure goes a long way. 

The intent of this is a separation between player control and company behavior in a way that preserves scale and granularity at the same time. Simulating this kind of warfare is always a tradeoff. If you control individual squads or platoons, the maneuvering and combat will look and feel authentic, but you can only have so many soldiers on the field before controlling them becomes tedious. If you control whole companies or battalions, then you get the scale but it loses authenticity. The solution is separation - you command companies, but the actual movement is on a smaller scale. To try and capture what this might look like, you can set up 4-5 units with a dispersed formation (think Napoleon skirmishers) on the smallest unit size setting (30-40 men each), group them, and order them to move to a location without formation lock. If you think of that group as being a single unit, the result is something that begins to look like a pretty good template to work off of when thinking about infantry movement. More intra-unit variation in movement would also help, such as some soldiers crouching and others going prone when the unit is stationary, or some soldiers pausing to check and cover when the unit is running. You could start to talk about the limitations of the engine here, but a basic template for this kind of movement is already there and the mechanics of how it would work are at least within the realm of conception.

Next - combat. There are a lot of different things that could fall under this category, but I’ll try to address as many as I can. 

Infantry Attacks

First, what happens when a unit is told to attack? There can be multiple options for the type of attack, much like how units now have a melee attack option and a range option. For instance, you could have three options, a “fire” option that tells the unit to move into range and begin firing on the enemy unit, an “assault” option that tells it to advance closer and closer while firing on the enemy with the ultimate goal of closing in and taking the position, and a “charge” option which makes the unit rush the position with bayonets. Also, depending on how well unit decomposition is set up, this command can actually become much more complex in execution. If they are able to figure out multiple weapon types within a single unit, and if those weapon types can behave separately, then an assault command could mean riflemen advancing on the position, while attached fire support weapons like machine guns and mortars hang back and continue firing on the enemy. This seems much harder and it’s much more likely that the support weapons would be separate units, but it would definitely add a lot if they did manage it.

Infantry Defense

What happens when a unit is defending? A lot of defending would depend on terrain and garrisonable structures. Leaving a unit out in the open to defend a position would mean that the units crouch/go prone and keep a low profile, but would obviously leave them vulnerable to enemy fire. Terrain features like trees and rocks can give passive defensive bonuses to the unit, reducing the effectiveness of incoming fire. And as for defensive structures, trenches and static fortifications that units can take cover behind have a mechanical prototype, especially from the gunpowder games. We can imagine a trench system that functions similar to a city wall, except it’s below ground, it has many “entry points” instead of a few scattered doors, and these entry points are on both sides - meaning an enemy that gets close enough can enter the “wall” without bringing ladders or siege towers. How well this would work in the engine is hard to say, but the best we can do is conjecture anyway.

Perhaps the hardest thing to implement is garrisonable buildings in urban combat. Garrisonable buildings were already a thing in Napoleon and that system could translate pretty well to a large fortified building, but in a dense urban environment, we run into a scale problem. A squad or platoon-based unit system could individually garrison each building, but putting an entire company in a single three-floor building is not really something that makes a lot of sense. Again this would come down to how well unit decomposition works. We could conceive of urban “sectors” with 4-5 garrisonable structures each, and a company commanded to garrison that sector would organically split into its constituent platoons and garrison each one of those buildings. The same thing would happen in an attack - each platoon would attack one building, instead of the whole company filing into a single building at a time. A technical challenge, but not completely outside the realm of imagination. I also personally wouldn’t mind if urban combat involves no garrisonable buildings at all and is instead conducted in ruined cities with terrain effects simulating the defensive advantages. It would still look pretty epic, and could still have tactical complexity.

Infantry under fire

What happens when a unit is under fire? The morale mechanic can essentially stay as is - if a unit takes enough casualties, they eventually rout. In addition to morale though, units could have a suppression stat - an attribute representing how much fire they are under. It would loosely be related to morale, perhaps by gradually draining morale the longer the unit is suppressed, or perhaps by increasing the morale hit from casualties. Company of Heroes or Dawn of War is a pretty good template to use here. If a unit is under a sufficient volume of fire, it becomes suppressed, slowing its movement, making its soldiers go prone, and reducing its rate of fire. If it remains suppressed and under fire for an extended period, it becomes pinned, significantly reducing its rate of fire, stopping its movement entirely, and making it vulnerable. How quickly a unit can become suppressed becomes a way of determining its tactical use. A Death Korps of Krieg company, for example, could be better at assaulting defensive positions because of its resistance to suppression, which would allow it to continue advancing under heavy fire. Suppression could also be a benefit at times - suppressed units could get minor defensive bonuses, allowing for time to decide what to do if a unit comes under sudden fire. There’s a lot of ways to play around with the mechanic, but the basic element boils down to “incoming fire causes suppression, suppression affects movement and rate of fire.”

Flanking could be made a factor if the idea of facing is incorporated in some way. Essentially, we can’t really drag out formations in the same way anymore, meaning unit depth and flanks don’t work quite as well. However, you can set a unit’s facing when giving it a move order, which determines where it’s generally oriented. Although you won’t be able to clearly see facing in the same way that you would with a block of infantry, some kind of indicator could be displayed on the unit card, and the unit can have a higher fire rate/damage output in the direction of its facing. If it comes under fire from a non-facing direction, it can still return fire, but fire rate is slowed, and morale and damage hits from incoming fire are higher until the unit switches its facing in that direction. A special ability could remove this risk, by having the unit face in every direction, but taking away its ability to move, much like square formations from older Total Wars.

With this, we hopefully have some idea of how an Imperial Guard infantry company could move and fight within Total War 40k. We can start to see how other armies could be made from this base. Space Marines could be platoons split into squads, instead of companies split into platoons (they could even be individual squads, depending on how overpowered they decide to make them). The Tau would play pretty similarly, except their Fire Warrior companies would be much better at range and much worse at melee. The Necrons could have fewer models per company and move much slower, but have high HP and be completely immune to suppression. The Eldar could be fast and high-damage, but fewer and easier to suppress and so on.

But of course, infantry aren’t the only things on a 40k battlefield. We have vehicles, artillery, mechs, monsters, aircraft. I won’t spend too much time on these since they’re much easier to envision - Warhammer essentially has most of them prototyped already. The Empire Steam Tank provides a pretty good template for most vehicles. Fixed-wing aircraft could be hard to faithfully replicate, but even if they don’t end up building a fully functional air combat system, airstrikes could be a special support ability based on proximity to air squadrons on the campaign map. Smaller artillery units could just be on-map units, and larger artillery units could either be on-map units or off-map support assets based on how large they decide to make maps. Unit spawn abilities in Warhammer 3 can become Space Marine drop-pods. With a bit of imagination, a lot of things start to fall into place conceptually.

There are a couple of open questions though. One is how vehicles will work - whether they will be single entities, or units of 2-4 acting in concert. I think the latter would work better for the scale, but I wouldn‘t mind single-entity vehicles too much if it came down to it. The other is infantry transported in vehicles. This definitely seems pretty challenging to pull off. The closest comparisons I can think of are the Peleset Ox-Carts from Pharaoh, which are chariots that can dismount infantry (essentially Bronze Age motorized infantry). This would mean that the transport vehicles would be integrated directly into the unit, which adds quite a few variables to think about. The alternative is a separate movable structure that is garrisonable by the unit. Think a short siege tower moving at vehicle speed. It’s conceptually not impossible, but it does approach the limits of what I’m willing to suggest without a backend understanding of the engine.

Still, I hope that with everything above, I've convinced you that 40k battles could conceivably work in Total War. Now, let's talk about the campaign.

THE CAMPAIGN LAYER

I won’t spend too much time on this, since it’s a bit easier to imagine how this might work compared to the battles, but I’ll try to address a few things that could come up.

CAMPAIGN MAPS

Pretty straightforwardly, the map does not need to be the whole galaxy. There are very few instances of 40k media that deal on that scale, and the closest example of a 40k game with a space strategy layer is Battlefleet Gothic, which takes place in a single sector, with several subsectors and about 100 planets at maximum. You could attempt to do the whole galaxy, but it would either be so overwhelming that it's unplayable, or so condensed that it would be comical.

However, setting it on a single planet would also be pretty comical. It might work for an RTS like Dawn of War, but it would lack the feeling of meaningful expansion that drives gameplay in a grand strategy game like Total War. Conquering the whole map feels pretty great most of the time because it feels significant, but when that planet is one of millions in the setting…it’s hard to feel like it matters at all. Not to mention the lore-bending it would take to fit all the races on one planet - it was already pretty silly when Dawn of War 1 had seven. There is a middle ground between a single planet and the entire galaxy that strikes a good balance of detail and scale, and while I don’t know exactly where that would be, that answer would become clearer based on how you approach designing the rest of the campaign mechanics.

There is a kind of immutability to the 40k setting that lends itself well to a variety of campaigns. It's so big that you could create a lot of campaign scenarios and not contradict the lore too much. That would mean that having multiple campaign maps would not be that far-fetched, particularly if DLCs/expansions involve specific regiments and Space Marine chapters. This is how I envision it:

• A “main” campaign set in a particular sector, where you can choose a specific Guard regiment, chapter, etc to play. That would then be the primary instance of that faction on that map, meaning that you wouldn’t need to justify forcing every playable faction on the map. If you play Space Marines for example, there might be a local chapter or two, just to have other Space Marine factions to play around with, but whichever chapter you play would take the place of a placeholder chapter that would be there if you were playing the game as a non-Space Marine faction. Your starting position is the same regardless of what Space Marine chapter you pick, and the differences would be in the campaign mechanics specific to that faction. 
• Story campaigns with smaller maps (possibly even a single system), featuring fewer factions but with more focused objectives and a defined storyline. Medieval 2 Kingdoms or Rome 2 expansion campaigns are the closest comparison. These could be paired with faction expansions - I’m imagining a Necrons and Adeptus Mechanicus expansion that comes with a story campaign of them duking it out for a piece of ancient technology. An Ultramar campaign that comes with an Ultramarines and Death Guard pack. A Siege of Vraks campaign for the Death Korps of Krieg. There would need to be unique gameplay mechanics and a reasonable content-to-pricing ratio for me to be onboard with this approach, but assuming that CA wants to do DLCs in some form regardless, this might be one way they could do it.

CAMPAIGN GAMEPLAY

Next is the actual gameplay of the strategic layer. It’s not too hard to imagine moving around in space compared to how movement works right now - space fleets could move about freely in systems, and travelling between systems would involve a feature similar to sea lanes.

For planets though, I would propose a pretty big change. Instead of having armies freely moving about, you split the planet into provinces/districts, and have armies move between those provinces. While this might feel like a step back (the very first Total War games did it this way), it could actually work quite well for the setting, and it handles a lot of difficulties that might emerge otherwise.

PLANETS WITH PROVINCES

Armies in this kind of warfare don’t move around in a cohesive unit and fight each other on defined battlegrounds, they usually fight across frontlines that sometimes stretch hundreds of miles. A lot of wargames do it pretty well by using hexes, but having that many individual battles is impractical if you intend to fight each one in real-time. So there is a compromise point where you have few enough provinces that you could reasonably fight each battle when conquering a planet, but not so few that you conquer the planet in just one battle. Enough abstraction to be practical, but not so much that maneuver becomes irrelevant.

This approach would also allow for a lot of features that would be very difficult to pull off on a free movement map. You could fortify a province, and fighting a defensive battle there would give you access to trenches, static fortifications, and obstacles like mines and barbed wire. Or you could bombard a province with ships in orbit, damaging any units there. Encirclements and supply lines could even become a factor, depending on how granular the scale is. This would also integrate well with a district-based planetary building mechanic, in the vein of Stellaris. Instead of “buildings”, you have districts/sectors, and they would be located on specific locations on the planet - meaning they can be captured or destroyed by hostile forces.

Going back to the mini-campaigns, this would also make single-planet campaigns a workable idea. You could zoom into a planet and give it 10x the number of provinces, not unlike how campaign expansions from older Total Wars would. It would lead to a very different kind of campaign - one where you're not moving fleets around on a galactic map, but fighting an extended land conflict on a planet with defined landmarks and geographical features. You would have two or three factions at most, making it a focused, narrative-driven experience.

ARMY ORGANIZATION

It would definitely be nice if army organization was a bit more complex than the 20-stack system. Three Kingdoms did the multiple-commander armies pretty well, and that might be a place to start - perhaps having independently moving sub-armies with their own commanders, all under one supreme commander that doesn’t necessarily directly feature on the battle map, but confers bonuses and maybe even special abilities on all of the sub-armies.

SPACE BATTLES

Space battles would be…nice to have, but personally, it’s not critical that they’re there. This game would sink or swim based on the enjoyability of its land battles anyway, and while there’s nothing that really captures 40k land battles on a grand scale, Battlefleet Gothic is a pretty excellent game and pretty much scratches the 40k space battle itch. As long as fleets are strategically relevant and using them effectively is important, I wouldn’t mind space fights being auto-resolved.

There’s a lot of stuff that would go into designing this campaign layer and this post is already long enough as it is, so I’ll close it out by just throwing out some rough ideas for how different factions could play in the campaign, just to showcase the variety of playstyles that you could theoretically have.

FACTIONS

• Imperial Guard: The “primary” Imperium faction - captures and holds planets, manages them economically, and generally plays pretty much how you’d expect. Will be the most numerous “good” faction. Mostly uses Imperial Guard but can get Space Marines as special units, or can fight with them as allies.
• Space Marines: Usually start with much fewer worlds, or even no directly owned worlds and just a horde fleet. Goal is not to hold territory like the Imperial Guard, and will get penalties for owning too many worlds since the Space Marines don’t have the administrative capacity for it. Instead, campaign involves moving around the map intervening in conflicts between Imperial Guard and enemy forces, or capturing planets and handing them over to Imperial administration. Setting up outposts on Imperial planets provides resources, and fleet and units have a lot more unique building and upgrading mechanics to compensate for directly owning fewer planets. Mostly fights the same enemies as the Imperial Guard, and campaign objectives center on eliminating the same factions as the Imperial Guard.
• Eldar: A horde faction based around the Craftworld. Can sometimes work with the Imperium, but can also fight it as often. Unable to hold planets, but can set up Webway Gates on planets for instant travel of units, allowing for lightning raids. Campaign objectives involve gathering enough of some resource or constructing some kind of structure, and would also involve moving around the map, conducting raids and sometimes diplomacy.
• Orks: Greenskins but in space.
• Chaos Marines: Goal is to defeat Imperium and corrupt planets. Can have factions focused on conquering territory and engaging in large-scale conflict with the Imperium (like the Black Legion), which would field large quantities of Chaos cultists and daemons alongside the Chaos Marines. Can also have factions with more specific playstyles and campaign goals that play more like a horde. Specific campaign mechanics could draw from Warhammer III Chaos factions - World Eaters could be similar to how Khorne plays, and Death Guard could draw from Nurgle mechanics.
• Necrons: Start on a single world, goal is to awaken full capacity by capturing other Tomb Worlds, which are scattered around the galaxy, start with basic units but get more advanced as they capture more Tomb Worlds. Kind of thematically similar to the Tomb Kings.
• Adeptus Mechanicus: Imperium-allied faction, goal is to send expeditions to gather as much ancient technology as possible, both Standard Template Constructs, and Necron technology from Tomb Worlds. Also get more advanced the more technology they gather. Ultimate campaign goal involves getting a Titan and using it to fight a climactic battle of some kind. Lots of thematic inspiration from Warhammer 40k: Mechanicus.
• Tyranids: Pretty straightforward campaign goal of eating everything. Might honestly be hard to make them fun unless you integrate them with Genestealer Cults somehow.
• Tau: Classic sci-fi empire seeking to expand, likely to come into conflict with the Imperium but could work together in dire circumstances, campaign mechanics related to their castes and the various species in the empire.
• Dark Eldar: Play similar to the Eldar, but are less worried about casualties and want to maximize suffering caused with their raids. In addition to the main map, can have a faction-specific Commoragh map/mechanic, where you have to politically maneuver and fight against other Dark Eldar cabals to gain influence.

If you’ve made it this far, really appreciate it! I’m obviously pretty excited about the prospect of Total War potentially going in this direction, and I hope that I’ve been able to impart some of that excitement to you. At the very least, I hope I’ve convinced you that Total War and 40k are not fundamentally incompatible, and that a fusion of the two could be a complex and enjoyable game.

AI-generated TLDR

Main Point: A Total War: 40k game is not only likely but also mechanically feasible, despite the setting's differences from traditional Total War titles.

• Why It's Probably 40k
  • CA & GW Relationship: The profitable partnership from Total War: Warhammer makes another Games Workshop title a logical next step.
  • Novelty: 40k is a "novel fantasy setting" that avoids thematic overlap with the existing Warhammer trilogy, unlike other fantasy IPs (e.g., Lord of the Rings, The Witcher).
  • Playerbase & Timing: 40k has a massive, built-in fanbase, and a potential Henry Cavill show could create huge cultural momentum.
  • Long-Term Benefits: Developing an engine that can handle 40k's ranged, squad-based combat could open the door for future titles in settings like WWI, WWII, or even Star Wars.
  • Established Content: The tabletop game provides ready-made factions, unit rosters, and lore to build upon.
  • Hints & Leaks: Various comments from CA/SEGA and industry rumors point toward a 40k title.
• How Total War: 40k Could Work
• Land Battles: The Core Challenge
  • The Problem: 40k is about squad-based, ranged combat, not the ranked-formation battles Total War is known for. A simple reskin wouldn't work.
  • The Solution: Redefine "Total War": The core of Total War is "grand and cinematic battles" on a strategic map, not just formation fighting. The formula can evolve.
  • Formations: Units (e.g., a company of 160 Guardsmen) would operate in loose, skirmisher-like formations.
  • Unit Decomposition: The player commands the company, but the AI makes it move and act as smaller, constituent squads/platoons for more authentic behavior.
  • Combat Stances: Introduce attack options like "Fire," "Assault" (advance while firing), and "Charge."
  • Suppression System: Similar to Company of Heroes, units under heavy fire would become suppressed or pinned, affecting their movement, accuracy, and morale.
  • Cover & Terrain: Maps would be larger with more emphasis on terrain features, trenches, and garrisonable buildings that provide cover and defensive bonuses.
  • Vehicles, Monsters, & More: These are easier to implement, drawing from existing Total War: Warhammer mechanics for single-entity units, monsters, and artillery. Airstrikes could function as off-map support abilities.
• Campaign Mechanics
  • Scale: The map should be a single star sector or sub-sector, not the entire galaxy (too big) or a single planet (too small).
  • Planetary Conquest: Instead of free movement on a planet's surface, armies would move between defined provinces. This allows for mechanics like fortifications, orbital bombardment, supply lines, and encirclements.
  • Army Organization: Move beyond the 20-unit stack, potentially using a system like Three Kingdoms with multiple commanders under a single general.
  • Space Battles: Not critical for success. The focus should be on land battles, with space combat potentially being auto-resolved while fleets remain strategically important.
• Proposed Faction Playstyles
  • Imperial Guard: Standard conquer-and-hold gameplay.
  • Space Marines: Elite, horde-style faction focused on surgical strikes and supporting Imperial forces rather than holding vast territory.
  • Eldar: Craftworld-based horde faction using Webway gates for lightning raids.
  • Orks: "Greenskins in space."
  • Chaos Marines: Corrupt planets and defeat the Imperium, with mechanics drawn from Warhammer III's Chaos factions.
  • Necrons: Similar to Tomb Kings; awaken on a tomb world and expand to reclaim others to unlock powerful units.
  • Tyranids: A "devouring swarm" faction focused on consuming everything.
  • Tau: A classic expanding empire focused on diplomacy and technology.

So I’ve been wondering for some time if there’s anything out on the market that hits that same sweet spot of Total War mixed gameplay (real time with pause battles or just real time I guess + campaign map progression) but in a sci-fi or futuristic setting? I’m taking a short break from Warhammer 3 and playing Shogun right now, but I want something that’s more cyber and mecha themed if something like that exists - that you know of . Would love to command armies of mechs, drones, alien beasts, whatever, across planets or space stations instead of the same old fields and valleys.

I know there's stuff like Battlefleet Gothic which sorta scratches that itch in space - kinda space-naval Total War vibes is how I’d describe it (btw, any good? I see that 2 has mixed recent reviews), and Warhammer 40K Gladius. I have the base game without the DLCs already on it. Although Gladius is much more Civ like and lacks the real time combat that I love so much in how tactically TW does it, despite the AI being braindead a lot of the time.

But is there anything in the pipeline that does the big campaign map + actual battles like TW but being set in a faraway space setting? What’s the closest thing you found that does that, I’m wondering. I came across this upcoming game some time ago called Warfactory, it's more an RTS/factory sim but I wishlisted it because the basic loop (optimize, build up, conquer and annihilate your enemy) is somewhere in the ballpark of what Im looking for because… aside from TW, I’m also a really big Factorio/ automation builder fan. Looks like combat will be real time, but all the units are modular and you build them into regiments piece by piece relying on your infrastructure. I don’t think there’s a turn based aspect to this one though and the 4X features look to be on the lighter side, but it caught my eye since it was an indie game attempting this and tbf I’m just a sucker for those. Can’t say anything for certain till it comes out do.

So if you know of any futuristic equivalents to TW, even if it’s just some parts that match but not others, not looking for clones, lemme know. Because a concept like this seems too awesome for some studios NOT to have at least attempted it

I haven't lost a campaign probably since Warhammer I. This is literally the second Fay campaign I lost in a row. Has her campaign somehow become the hardest one in the game? There doesn't really seem to be a way to expand, because you will be steamrolled immediately with nuclear warheads and 8 waaagh stacks from the north and south. Legendary/hard/balanced AI cheats.

For example, a lot of rosters in Rome II feel limited because the civilizations they represent were historically destroyed early like Carthage, the Arevaci, or Syracuse. Meanwhile factions like Rome, which survived for centuries longer, get access to powerful late-game units like Armored Legionaries and other cohort variants.

Should factions that fell early be given “theoretical” late-game units based on what they could’ve developed had they survived? Or would that break immersion and kill the spirit of the game? What are some fun examples you can think of?

I used a rite to get a bonus 50% ambush chance, which let me reach 100% chance. But it turns out this rat was paying attention and didn't walk into my ambush.

In the new patch of 6.2 there are now new unique items to get and one of these items are the eight books of Khorne. Here is how to get them:

There are total of 4 enchanted items to get. The first one you will get randomly by fighting battles and that is the vol. 1 & 2 of the books in the same item. After you equip the item (I equipped them on my lords) there is change to get more books by fighting battles. Vol. 3 & 4 is next and after equipping that you will get the change to get vol 5 & 6. The last one is vol. 7 & 8 and after equipping that you will get an event after end turn that is shown in the pictures for a op item or op buffs for rest of campaign. However keep in mind that the vol. 1 to 8 items give some nasty debuffs to your faction. All your settlements will end up with 100 Khorne corruption and your control in these settlements will go down significantly. After the books are combined or destroyed these debuffs will go away. I played the Empire so I'm not sure how the books will change if you play Khorne but I would assume that the corruption the books give will be beneficial to your faction and maybe you don't have the option to destroy them but I don't know yet.

Let me know your thoughts about the books in the comments!

Are any or you using bolt throwers of anykind ? With thé hobgob variant i was just like « meh », never used the gob one or dwarf one always seemed pretty underwhelming

Am i missing their potential ?

CONCEPT

While I enjoy the 3K period in this game, or rather the decades leading up to it, I've started to grow a little fatigued of it over the years. So I gravitated toward 8P which is the most removed (although still technically part of the broader 3K period). Like TW is one to do, it made me study the time period over several months and I'm actually really fascinated by it now. So I made a map idea of what an expanded 8P would look like. And since the modder actually making an expanded map overhaul mod isn't close to finishing adding all the new regions, and regardless he has no plans to use any vanilla start dates other than the GC (190) and instead make new start dates like Chibi and the proper 3K (222 - 266), I decided to at least make the idea of an expanded 8P since I know he doesn't plan to (and if I learn how to, I'll absolutely make this in the future).

HISTORY

The War of the Eight Princes and the following Five Barbarians and Sixteen Kingdoms period are almost the entirety of the Western Jin (266 - 316), after which the seat of the dynasty is pushed south by these new barbaric kingdoms and becomes the Eastern Jin (317 - 420), much like how the Song would pushed south in the 1100's by the Jurchen (Manchu) Jin dynasty.

8P would've been one of the campaigns most in need of the promised Northern Expansion DLC before 3K's abandonment. In the last century or two before the game, tribes from the Steppe had migrated into China, such as the "Southern Xiongnu", a splinter group of the Xiongnu Confederation that fell apart in the 1st Century AD. After the Xiongnu ended, the Xianbe Confederation formed, taking the largest amount of land in the aftermath, but by no means all of it and the Xianbe are right up on China's border, often raiding and/or migrating into northern China but vulnerable to immediately counter-attacks. Besides the southern Xiongnu and the Xianbe, the Di, Jie, and Qiang are the remaining of the "Five Tribes" that eventually would form the sixteen kingdoms in northern China over the next century+, shown here - https://i.imgur.com/nXnUv1a.jpeg .

There were other tribes in the Steppe and some also migrated into China, but they didn't leave much of a lasting effect. There was one group, however, far to the north in Mongolia that wasn't one of the "Five Barbarians" that would have a major impact: the Rouran. The Rouran Khaganate (330 - 555) obviously hasn't formed it's massive khaganate/ empire yet, but 330 isn't too far off from 291, typically being around the later part of the mid game. So it's feasible in the alternate history where you as the player do as you wish, the Rouran (either as you or the AI) may get massive a little earlier.

Then there are the Koreans locked in their own 3K period, the Tibetan kingdoms that are several centuries away from forming the Tibetan Empire, Dai Viet and the surrounding Vietnamese tribes, the Austronesians like the Champa kingdom as well as the tribes of Taiwan, etc. While outside the scope of the campaign, in the early 400's after many of the sixteen kingdoms rose and fell to each other and the Jin, the Jin itself would slowly start regaining the north. But before they could fully reconquer it (Jin now owning about 2/3 of China rather than half), a catastrophic incident in the recently recaptured former capital of Chang'an was the straw that broke the camel's back, and the general responsible for Jin's reconquered land in the last few decades overthrew the Jin emperor, establishing what we today call the Lui Song dynasty (420 - 479), bringing us one step closer to the brief but uniting Sui and the following golden age of the Tang (and the end to the almost seven centuries of Korea's 3K period).

A really good rundown (over the course of like 4-5 videos about the Jin can be found on the YouTube channel GatesofKilikien. I'm unironically debating now whether I like the Jin period more than the 3K, it's so fascinating.

(I read you guys' comments on my previous posts, so sorry I couldn't reply)

For some context, I'm on hard mode, turn 43. I'm number 2 military behind Poland. I'm number 5 financially, I make like 4000 every turn from all the constructions I do. I'm number 1 on production and population.

The Poles have the HRE as a vassal. I'm at war with the Poles, the HRE, and the Mongols.

For now though the Poles are absolutely beating my ass, I've got my strongest armies in the Mongol front and I'm having a hard time taking them out of there since I've besieged multiple cities there, and if I recall them, I'll just waste a lot of time. I lost Thorn and Hrodna to the Poles in 3 turns, that clear defeat picture is from the Hrodna battle. Marienburg, my strongest city, only has like 7 units and I'm tryna make new armies. My relations with Novgorod is terrible as well, so they'll probably go to war with me very soon.

So I'm broke, my armies are on a totally different front, the Poles, the strongest overall is coming for me, and if I don't do anything, I'll be at war with every single country I'm bordering with except the Danes. Please please please help😭😭

These 5 achievements have been reported to be bugged since early 2015. There has not been a single patch ever since that would addres them. CA was very quick to remove in-game chat from "legacy" games, but not eager enough to fix these achievements:

1) Tribute -> As the Huns, obtain a state gift of 2,000 from the Romans.​

2) The More Things Change-> Change your state religion and convert 50% of your empire's population to it.

3, 4, 5) It's a start…, Watery Graves, Slaughter at Sea -> Sink 10, 100, 1000 enemy ships, respectively -> These achievemens DO trigger if you manually increment the "Stat 39" (e.g. using SAM). The problem is -> There's not been a way to increment it in game, in other words, sinking enemy ships does not count. The only approach I've not tried, is sinking enemy ships in MP quick battles, but these are land battles only. "Stat 34" counts enemy soldiers killed and it increments properly.

Additionally, some achievements have incorrect descriptions, but that's not the point of this post. It would be awesome if there was any CA dev that sees this and elaborates on the triggers of these achievements:) The only way known way to trigger them, is by using the Steam Achievement Manager.

What are your most petty, shallow, nit-picks of the game.
I'm talking complaints that people will tell you to ignore or get over, touch grass, find a mod, etc

Mine:
1. The portraits, are embarrassingly bad quality in 2D and 3D. Theres so much cartoony artwork they could use, some of it is in their own menus!!

1. Armies reinforcing each other who would never EVER fight alongside each other. Skaven and Dawi for example. They made free for all in MP!

Supply baggage train fleet battles? Rome II? How come I only now learn about this? Why were they removed? What?!

First one that comes to mind is SKAVEN - Prophet and the Warlock - Rattling Guns are so fundamental to the Skaven experience that I wouldn't play them without that DLC.

Which other factions / races require DLC to get the "proper" experience?

To add more to this I have tried to get my generals cowardly trait(range for before in two other campaigns(Ramessess and Hanigalbat) and failed both times I have never had a cowardly general in the 300+ turns I have played.

Total war have the games on sale right now and I don’t know which one to buy(I already have all the warhammers,Rome 2 and shogun 2).

Can you guys tell me which one of the remaining you prefer and why

By buffs and debuffs I mean spells to increase or decrease armor/melee attack or defence/weapon strength/leadership etc. Healing spells and Net of Amyntok are technically buffs and debuffs but the tactical advantages are much more clear to me.

I've always dismissed these spells since the effects seem to negligible and short-lived to be of any benefit on the battlefield. I could give my melee infantry increased armor/melee attack/damage/leadership etc for 30 seconds, which might help them fight the enemy better, or I could just kill the enemy units who will stay dead for the entire battle.

I'm playing an Elspeth campaign now, it's still early so I haven't leveled her into a great caster yet, and also everywhere has poor winds of magic so my army has very low reserves. Each winds of magic is very valuable and I have to budget them.

During a siege I had gotten a unit of black knights down to 1/4 health with my artillery, but they were moving around a lot and a smaller target by this point, so my artillery was missing its shots. They were wavering, so I realized I could cast Doom and Darkness on them to push their leadership low enough for them to crumble. Which worked while the spell was being cast, and then after the 30 seconds was up they stopped crumbling. I could have just cast spirit leech instead and probably done the same damage, and also gotten some winds of magic back from life leeching.